Brianna Smrke has been working with the simulation team at SiG@Waterloo. She blogged about our Sudbury simulation intensiveat downwithvowels. We’re reposting her first-person accounts of those sessions. (Read Sudbury Day 1).

I realized (probably because people were telling me directly) that this is the first time anyone’s tried a social innovation lab with simulations. We’re trying to mash together technology and people to be able to tell the story of this system and this problem; but to do so in a way that allows others to poke around with the ideas we come up with.

In December 2012, members of our team went to Sudbury to work with a group of people interested in how Northern Ontario might be affected by a transportation spine to the Ring of Fire.

The prototypes we were able to develop during the 3-day intensive allowed us to test models that have a high-degree of interactivity, whereby users can easily change variables and see how the changes might play out.

Steve Williams narrates this introduction to the InsightMaker model he developed for the project in consultation with economist David Robinson.

This InsightMaker model shows cohorts’ eligibility for jobs in mining sector with education and employment factors. It also models population segments that are exiting the work force due to dropout and substance abuse issues. In this model we can see that while there may be large numbers of jobs available, communities may not have sufficient numbers of qualified employees to fill those jobs. Food security factors dramatically impact primary and high school graduation rates, thereby impacting the pool of labour qualified for extractive industries employment. Rather than investing in apprenticeship and trade school programs, we might better spend efforts ensuring adequate food security in the region to ensure that children stay in, and complete, school.

From left to right: Michael Hewlett, David Robinson, Mark Tovey, and Erica Robinson

Brianna Smrke has been working with the simulation team at SiG@Waterloo. She blogged about our Sudbury simulation intensiveat downwithvowels. We’ll be reposting her first-person accounts of those sessions, plus impressions of her current trip to India to visit the OaSiS Social Innovations Laboratory in Bhopal.

In December 2012, members of our team went to Sudbury to work with a group of people interested in how Northern Ontario might be affected by a transportation spine to the Ring of Fire.

The prototypes we were able to develop during the 3-day intensive allowed us to test models that have a high-degree of interactivity, whereby users can easily change variables and see how the changes might play out.

This model shows the population, local economic impact and social impacts of proposed mines in Northern Ontario. You can change variables such as the density of mines (i.e., number of mines per 100km2) and number of employees per mine. The model shows that under reasonable assumptions of mine density, the population increase in the region will be dramatic. The model allows for the impact of worker families and support workers on the total population increase. You can also model the economic impacts by making assumptions on the proportion of salaries that are spent locally along with the proportion of local outsourcing by the mine sites themselves.

In December 2012, members of our team went to Sudbury to work with a group of people interested in how Northern Ontario might be affected by a transportation spine to the Ring of Fire.

The prototypes we were able to develop during the 3-day intensive allowed us to test models that have a high-degree of interactivity, whereby users can easily change variables and see how the changes might play out.

Steve Williams narrates this introduction to the Northern Ontario Demographic and Income Trend Model he developed for the simulation project, in consultation with economist David Robinson.

David Robinson: Here we model the case if things proceed as they have previously in Canada. The federal government and provincial governments are all trying to avoid this simple case. It’s relatively simple to extend this model to account for some more sophisticated policies intended to let local first-nations people use these developments.